Pundits are making their predictions about the coming year and many will throw up their hands and say President trump is unpredictable.
That’s entirely wrong - Trump's agenda for the next four years is very easy to predict.
Think big business
First, what isn’t going to happen. The minimum wage will not be increased enough to matter, although it is likely to get a small bump, no family will ever again be able to make ends meet on a single worker’s minimum wage salary, it would lower profits for some businesses.
Second, China won’t be seriously challenged - once Trump discovers how many people Walmart employees and that slave wage workers survive on cheap Chinese goods.
Illegal immigrants we love 'em
Third - Trump's infamous wall may happen, but if so, there will be big gaps. The wall may be a make-work project but third world workers pick all the vegetables you eat whether they do it in California or in South America.
As for deportation, illegal immigrants are a vital part of our economy. Generations of Americans have been trained out of personal service (i.e. butlers and maids) as something real Americans don't do (except single mothers of course). U.S. schools still train factory workers in schools run like factories. Who will clean, trim hedges, watch children, build houses, and pick lettuce if not illegal immigrants?
Trump won’t deport cheap workers and he won’t block the next wave of starving and frightened South Americans until Rosie the Robot is reality (The Jetsons).
Cabinet
If these predictions seem outrageous after a campaign which was supposedly about helping the middle class, just look to the cabinet appointments. So far. All of them from EPA, to Education, to Energy, want to cripple or eliminate those same departments mostly serve the poor and middle class.
Trump's world is opposite world - expect the opposite of what he promised.
Secretary of State? Irrelevant. Trump will use Twitter to undermine anything the State department does.
Years three and four the big lie again
This is the easiest to predict. Dates are necessarily imprecise but sometime near the beginning of 2019 Republicans, if they are still with Trump, or, if not, Trump on his own, will begin making increasingly outrageous claims about how the Democrat minority prevented his attempt to help the middle class and coal miners.
The heat of Democrat bashing will, of course, be a staple of the next four years but it may simmer on the back burner for the next two, in favor of immigrant and Muslim bashing although, compared to recent administrations, all four years of Democrat bashing may seem like a napalm and oil field fire in the desert by comparison. BTW, that is probably going to happen too since imported oil is now out and Trump called for bombing oil fields.
After all, why burn someone else's oil in exchange for worthless paper when you can use up your own resources first? Some really disastrous terrorist incident will occur, even if the Trump administration has to blow minor problems out of all proportion. Coal miners may hear big talk but see few jobs and some of the failings of Trump policies will be blamed on Obama’s legacy of near full employment.
Slash-and-burn vs planting seeds
Trump policies are simple. If it hurts big business it’s out. If it educates future voters, it’s out. If it ignores short-term profits, it’s out. Climate change is out but watch for the head fake.